Pendulate

Pendulate is a free monosynth developed by Newfangled Audio and released by Eventide. No iLok is required. The synthesizer features a new type of oscillator based on the physics of a double pendulum. The oscillator section is followed by a wavefolder and a low-pass gate, both inspired by Don Buchla’s West Coast synthesis designs. If those terms don’t mean much to you yet, the short version is that Pendulate produces chaotic, unpredictable sounds that are very different from what you’d get out of a typical subtractive or FM synth.

Pendulate excels at dark and glitchy textures. The modulation architecture allows up to 169 simultaneous modulation routings, including several internal and external modulation sources. If that sounds complex, the plugin comes with 136 presets to help you get started with sound design. I reach for Pendulate when I want something that sounds unusual. It’s not a synth for bread-and-butter pads or leads, but for metallic drones, evolving noise textures, and sounds that sit in the cracks between tonal and atonal, it’s hard to beat.